Final Writing From Winning Coffee

Post-Script: We used to buy our coffee beans from Winnings, a biweekly pilgrimage that would also see us enjoying a plate of enchiladas and eggs (slathered with red and green chile sauce) or the bagel sandwich - typically on a Sunday morning, when the regulars would be seated at the big oval table near the serving line, doing the crossword puzzle and discussing the week's events.

The sidewalk in front of the shop is wide and brick-paved, with numerous patio tables and chairs, which were always filled with an eclectic mixture of students, regulars and semi-street people. Though smoking isn't permitted within 20 feet of a building here in ABQ, it was common for people to be smoking on the patio, using Winning-supplied, sand-filled ash trays, with the aroma of hand-rolled tobacco wafting on the breeze. Our very own little Left Bank; the Left Bank of Route 66.

I came here often enough to notice the regulars, and would strike up a conversation with some, even though I lived across town in the suburbs - which they were keen enough to pick up on. One such fellow was a young guy who always dressed in a black suit and white shirt, and would be writing poetry in a ragged notebook. Another regular was Cherokee, a middle-aged lady who's been living on the streets for decades, though she'd have enough money for a cup of coffee and a plate of breakfast. She'd be warming herself in the early morning sun, wrapped in her off-white blanket that you could smell from a block away. I suspect the management of Winnings might have given her a plate of food now and again for free. That's the way they were.

Three times a week Bradley would set up his books on the counter adjacent to the coffee roaster. He did a good trade in classic 20th century literature, aimed for the university crowd. I saw him and his wife today, as I was typing up this piece. She said he'll probably retire his mobile book business and perhaps take up music production. He would always have an assistant to haul the boxes of books to and from his truck, usually a local who needed the work. Bradley was that kind of fellow. I'm going to miss him.

There were lots of regulars, many who had their own table, sitting in the corner perhaps, writing on a laptop, or in a notebook. Chris, the co-owner, told me today that at least three doctorates were earned from UNM by folk who did the majority of their writing here at Winning Coffee.

I started coming here in the late 1990s, and would write in a journal book, using either mechanical pencil or fountain pen, then later in my AlphaSmart Neo, though I rarely took a typewriter, mainly because the place was so busy on weekday mornings, with people reading or studying, that I didn't want to disturb them. I wrote many blog articles and short stories here, including the Loser's Blend series, which I self-published, and was also featured in my story for Cold Hard Type.

With the increased pace of my YouTube video production schedule I haven't been frequenting Winnings very often during the last few years, since it involves a time commitment and drive across town. Now I regret not spending more time here. And I wonder if perhaps I'll soon have an urge to sit down at some worn table, eclectic music in the background, coffee-stained hardwood floors that have seen a lifetime of wear, sipping a wonderfully rich and dark latte that makes Starbucks taste like warmed milk, channeling my inner Muse as I put words to paper, in some newly discovered coffee shop very much like what Winnings was. I hope so, but there are no guarantees in life. But the spirit of Winning Coffee lives on my memories. Perhaps there's one more story for the Loser's Blend mythos still waiting to be penned? We shall see.

Typecast via Canon Typestar 4 onto Staples thermal fax paper.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Post-Script: In my desire to keep this piece a one-pager, I ran out of room to mention that we've also tried a Bialetti brand Moka Pot, stove-top espresso maker. While it makes an okay espresso, it's always a bit burnt-tasting, because of the heat required to get the little thing to generate steam pressure. But it is a genuine espresso experience, in the sense that this has been the traditional way many Italians make their daily coffee; or so the advertising informs us.

About that top picture of the beans; these aren't the darkest, oiliest coffee beans I've ever seen. I was struggling for a decent coffee-related photo this morning, and this was all I could come up with. As I mentioned in the piece, we've for years bought our beans from Winning Coffee, who do their own roasting. But their main roaster dude (is that a title?) finally moved on after many years, and since then the beans haven't been the same. Also, I know several coffee geeks at work, and these people are truly obsessed, in ways I never was. For example, I don't like straight espresso, preferring it sweetened with sugar and a dash of whole milk. Not so these hardcore types. They've also informed me that dark, oily beans supposedly don't work as well in an espresso machine.

So then there's this thing called "third wave coffee;" which, in case you didn't get the memo, is already outdated by "fourth wave coffee." But here in New Mexico, we're usually a few years behind everyone else, so we've just now seen so-called third wave coffee shops spring up around town. Sometimes news travels slow along I-40 from LA. These are places that do pour-overs and siphon extractions, and also offer cold-pressed coffee. And their espresso beans are less dark and oily, the results a bit more bright chocolate tasting. Kind of like the recent trend in bitter, hoppy IPA beers. You're supposed to like them, because everyone else who matters likes them. Except I don't like them; I prefer dark ales, porters and stouts, by the way.

The thing is, I still haven't had a decent cup of coffee at a third wave coffee shop. The pour overs and such taste like old Navy coffee, which is where you brew a pot in a percolator, then dispense the results, via a large container, back into the machine and re-perk it for a second time. The kind of coffee where the spoon will stand straight up in the cup without touching the sides. Where us younger fellas would need a mess of sugar and creamer just to make it palatable; unless you were an old Chief Petty Officer, beer gut hanging over your uniform belt, your coffee cup hand permanently deformed into that hook-shaped cup-holding posture. These old boys could walk up the steepest shipboard ladders, in the roughest seas, without spilling a drop.

I also got into trying Vietnamese coffee. Even went to the trouble of buying a little metal coffee maker, with the Vietnamese-brand coffee and sweetened condensed milk. Tastes like some dessert beverage, not something you'd want to drink first thing in the morning. Oh well.

As I said earlier, the Aeropress is the only alternative method I've tried that's any good. But it's one cup at a time, and you have to get your process down exactly. Scientific, laboratory-grade repeatability. If you alter the grind, or water temperature, or any other "process parameter" by just a smidgen, the results will vary wildly. It's like developing black & white film. Your agitation method, how long you stir the grinds in the hot water, how soon you start the press, whether you use it right-side-up or upside-down, paper or metal screen filter - these all effect the results to a noticeable degree. Some mornings it's great, others you get this bad taste in your mouth and wonder whether you should've first brushed you teeth (is there any coffee-flavored toothpaste out there?). Even our Starbucks Barista machine varies from day-to-day. Weird.

But then there's the old drip machine. This morning I brought it in from the garage, dusted it off, washed out the tank and carafe, and made a pot. Wonderful, basic, fresh, hot coffee. Like coffee was meant to taste. And enough for a refill or two.

Typecast via Smith-Corona Silent-Super. This is the first chance I've had to put it through its paces since last week's successful repair session, and it types wonderfully. There's still a bit of smearing on some of the uppercase characters, something to do with the way the type slugs hit the type guide fingers on the way to striking the ribbon, that will require more tinkering at a later date. But I'll live with it for now. This is why I'd never make a good typewriter repairman, it takes too long for me to get all the bugs worked out of these sensitive machines. The customer would be calling me, months later, inquiring about their unit, and I'd hem and haw about how I'm still testing it for reliability.

"An Interesting Day in Area 36"

Post-Script: A bit more from the Losers Blend mythos, inspired by the look and feel of this old Smith-Corona Silent sitting in its half-case on my lap in the afternoon shade. Perhaps not entirely compatible with the theme of Easter/Resurrection Sunday, but one has to strike when the iron's hot, creativity-wise.

I snapped the top picture on my front patio, hoping it might look something like a coffee shop patio table at the fictional Losers Blend coffee shop, inspired by my local Winning Coffee; but I didn't have true fanfold printout paper, so I had to punch some Circa binding holes in an old Freestyle Photo receipt instead; plus add a bit of sci-fi look to the image in post. Kind of reminds me of the color tone of that old 1970s movie Soylent Green.

The thought was running through my mind, as I was writing this, how easy would it be to find typing paper in this fictional future world. Recycled paper seemed a logical solution, typing between the lines of someone's old printout. You'll notice I didn't address the issue of typewriter ribbons; maybe they just soak the old ribbons in a bit of Synthspresso syrup? Hmm, now there's an idea...

Personal Discoveries and Barry's Folly

Ageing Hippies at Winning Coffee

Is there some universal law that dictates when a person first makes a personal discovery? What if that discovery involves a public venue, like Winning Coffee Company, in the University Neighborhood of Albuquerque? These things are like wings you don't even know you've put on, they've become so comfortable. In the case of Winnings, I can't now recall how I first heard of it, or from whom, or the circumstances of my first visit. All I know for certain is that there came a time, in the mid-aughts, when I began spending many a morning at Winnings, eating breakfast, drinking coffee and writing in a journal.

The circumstances of how these places come to be are mysterious, or so I'd like to pretend. In fact, some one or group of people had the vision to start this business, in 1996; but that's not what this story is about. The story I'd like to tell is that Winnings is as unlikely of a hangout for creatives as one can ever imagine in this dry, dusty southwest city, seemingly perpetually insulated from the balance of civilization by many hundreds of miles of badlands and years of history.

If Beatnik culture were a "Thing," let us presume, and someone with the vision and aptitude to make a buck off the declining entrails of mid-20th century American Beatnik culture were to have a free hand in fashioning a simulacra of that culture, they could do no better than start at Winnings, study what it is and what it is they do, and try to franchise the results far and wide.


Simulacra of Decrepitude

You'd need, at the very least, an aroma of cumin and cayenne wafting from an ancient-looking kitchen, just as mood music fills the modern spaces of Starbucks out in Suburbia. You'd need some corporate specification defined for how intense the aroma becomes, along with how to simulate the decrepitude of years of caked-on paint, crazed plaster walls and tin ceilings in some state of disarray. An exacting simulacra of decrepitude, canned and marketed for the suburbanites in newly built communities of cracker mansions out by the Interstate, neatly set down in their precise rows of grids, enticing them to drive their SUVs down to the strip mall and experience a bit of inner-city, beatnik funkiness distilled down to its essential ingredients. Employee personal hygiene would be optional, in order to preserve the aroma of the unkempt philosopher, specified in the corporate policy manual, which also mandates faded bell-bottom denim, braided beards and bandanas securing greasy locks. Most essential would be the front patio, where tables and chairs offer a convenient place for revolutions to be fomented in billowy clouds of hand-rolled cigarette smoke; local ordinances would require special exemptions, palms would need to be greased. We have money to make, boy!

Of course, no true revolutions will arise from our imaginary chain of faux-beatnik coffee shops (Now Nationwide!), only harmless little pretend ones; for the affluence of American Suburbia is predicated on the notion of keeping one's head to the grindstone of Corporate America, doing as one's masters might dictate, and don't rock the boat.

On October 1, 2011, (un)Occupy Albuquerque, a protest group loosely inspired by the then ongoing and worldwide Occupy Movement, began a weeks-long protest and occupation of Yale Park, across Central Avenue from Harvard Drive, the location of Winning Coffee, which became for participants a de facto support triage, with food, drink and moral encouragement. For myself, Winning had by now also become my own personal triage, a place from which to escape middle-class suburbia and it trappings. I'd visit almost every week, notebook and camera in hand, simultaneously inspired and also desiring to capture on film a fleeting essence of the ephemeral. Like capturing fairies on glass plates, how does one capture the essence of a culture defined primarily by the negative space of protest and opposition? It's like that old optical illusion: is it a pair of faces or a candlestick?

I think it always comes back to that most essential approach, storytelling. People are intrinsically interested in the lives of other's, especially if those others come from a different walk of life. I've always felt a bit out-of-place visiting Winning Coffee because of the imagined disparity between my station in life (middle-class suburbanite) and those Winning regulars closer to the streets. And yet, as I've come to know some of them, I've found a richness in their diverse backgrounds that is wholly unexpected and irreplaceable.

Some of these people I've gained only a casual familiarity with, enough to catch a mere glimpse into their psyche, but enough to serve as inspiration for fictional characters in a series of short stories based on Losers Blend, the parallel universe fictionalized version of Winnings.

It's been many months since I've visited Winnings; their coffee roaster guy quit and we'd begun buying beans elsewhere. It's been several years since I was a regular enough visitor to spend hours there writing, or visiting with fellow patrons. So it came as some shock to learn this week that they are having financial difficulties, brought about by the Albuquerque Rapid Transit project, which has resulted in the entirety of Central Avenue being torn up, disrupting traffic, parking and shopping for miles. The project has earned the scorn of most every business along Central, known by its initials ART; but there's nothing art-like or redeeming about it. The Mayor, Richard Barry, heavily promoted it as a way to begin transitioning the city's transportation infrastructure away from being so automobile-centric; a noble cause. But instead of placing it in a part of town most needing mass transit - the suburbs of the densely-packed northeast heights - he instead located it along the one thoroughfare already better served by bus lines than any other. So while the city might call it ART, I call it Barry's Folly.

It will take several more years before the project is concluded, and funding has not even been appropriated for any more than the initial demolition phase currently underway. Neither was the public given an opportunity to directly vote to determine the project's future, but it was instead mandated from the top, down. Theoretically, a democratic society works by the government working for the people, not the other way around.

There is the very real prospect that, even if the project is successfully completed, those areas of downtown, the University District and Nob Hill who were to benefit so directly from the transformation will be burned-out, boarded-up shells of their former vibrancy, a zone of economic blight brought about by the reality that the cure was worse than the illness; that in attempting to revive the city's core through infrastructure improvements they've killed off those essential but delicate economies of small businesses which make up most of this city's commercial liveliness; the very opposite of what Mayor Barry promised. Unique places like Winning Coffee might very likely cease to exist.

Conspiracy theorists might even conjecture this was their intention all along, so that real estate could be bought up cheaply and sold off to new corporate clients waiting in the wings.

This morning we had a late breakfast at Winnings, a hearty burrito filled with eggs, potatoes, green chile sauce and cheese; and their wonderfully rich lattes. Bradley, the bookseller, was there, setting up shop in the corner nook by the coffee roasting machine. He has a younger assistant who does the heavy lifting of setting up and tearing down, whom I asked how the books are organized, and the answer I got revealed once again the rich diversity of this crowd, as he told me that they're organized by genre: beat authors here, soviet realists there, feminist lit over yonder, Latin American fantasists over there. Only at places like Winnings will you find the guy with the strong back also has a strong mind for literature.

As we entered through the front door (there's also a rear entrance from the alley) the regulars were seated outside at the patio tables, while the big oval table inside by the order line had the usual old guys, the knights of the round table I call them, including the one who always sports some puffy-sleeved shirt and black vest, with black top hat. As we stood in line waiting to place our order, I overheard one of them inform the others "One of the Chicago Seven is now a stock broker."

I'm hoping Barry's Folly will fail to have its full sway, and that these unique venues like Winning Coffee will survive and prosper. In the meantime, Bradley informed me that the new coffee roaster guy now has his act together, and so perhaps next week, when our stock of beans begins to run low, I'll make a drive down to the University District, brave the construction barricades, have breakfast and perhaps do a bit of writing. Maybe I'll take a portable typewriter, sit out on the front sidewalk tables, sip my coffee and pound inky words into paper, the aroma of hand-rolled smokes wafting in the breeze.

Post-Script: I enjoyed writing the first draft of this piece on the teletype paper roll using the Facit 1620. Spaced at 1.5 lines, the piece came to 31 inches.

More Muddled Mobile Musings

Part One: Wrangling With Writing

There was a time yesterday, as I was attempting to finalize a video for upload to YouTube, that I thought it was all over, this idea of using a simple iPod Touch device as my main tool for video production. I've been trying to keep from having to use my old desktop PC as a video production platform, for a number of reasons. One, it's an older platform; two, the software is outdated; three, I don't know of a video production solution for PCs that is as simple, stable and elegant as is iMovie on the iOS devices; four, a mobile solution means that I can, if so desired, continue to create and publish videos while on the road, which I can't do with a desktop PC.

Apple's mobile platform is pretty stable and mostly well-thought out in design. But the main nagging problem with these iOS devices, and why I recently purchased this newer iPod Touch with twice the memory capacity as my older iPad2, is that their internal memory cannot be expanded, and file transfers are pretty limited. My older iPad was becoming a problem as a useful tool for video production, because its limited free memory meant I had to keep productions below a certain size. Since I've been using this new iPod Touch, I haven't had much of a problem. Until yesterday.

Since purchasing the little iPod, I had installed Hipstamatic, a photography app, and iAWriter, for use as a writing tool. Other than those two, the iPod remained as it was purchased. You wouldn't ordinarily think that merely installing two more apps would make all the difference in the world with the way the device performed, but it certainly did. Without enough internal memory, all of those raw video clips that get imported during a project take up so much room that there isn't enough left over to finalize and upload a project; this was the problem I was seeing yesterday.

I knew I had to keep Hipstamatic, since I use it to create my thumbnail still photos that get attached to the videos seen on YouTube; these thumbnail images need to be less than 2Mb in order to upload successfully to YouTube; the default camera app for iOS creates images too large, with no way to downsize their files, while Hipstamatic offers lower-res version. So I deleted iAWriter, which freed up enough room to permit yesterday's video project to be completed and uploaded. Having to delete this dedicated text editing app was a disappointment, since I had hopes of being able to use the little iPod also as a writing tool, along with the recently acquired mechanical keyboard, as a sort of replacement AlphaSmart Neo.

But actually, I discovered I could still make it work for writing, as a form of electric typewriter. Permit me to explain.

Yesterday morning I made a motorcycle ride down to my favorite coffee shop, Winning Coffee, and had a cuppa while conversing with a table of regulars, while also getting a bit of writing done. I had brought with me the mechanical keyboard in its cloth carrying pouch, along with the iPod Touch, its wooden holder and the necessary cable and adapter. It turns out that the entire rig will fit easily inside the cloth pouch, making it a very mobile writing solution.

The piece I was working on was nothing earth-shattering, just notes for how I wanted to complete another writing project. Once I returned home, I began shooting scenes for a video, and thought nothing about the piece I was writing. Once the problems with the iPod's memory began to occur, before I could think more clear-headed I had deleted the iAWriter app and with it the piece I had written. No great loss, for in the process of writing it I had formulated most of the ideas in my head for that project. Sometimes writing for me serves as a way to simply organize one's thoughts, in the way that the slogan for Field Notes pocket notebooks is "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now."

But something I had done the night before became a clear direction forward in this writing adventure, which was that I had sat down, late at night, with the older iPad propped up on my knee and mechanical keyboard in my lap, and I had written an impromptu essay, which I immediately printed out to paper via my wireless, network-connected printer. The idea being that, in my experience, paper has served me as a much more reliable archive than has digital media, and using a digital system to ultimately create a printed-to-paper (using stable laser printing) document would be an interesting mashup of old and new methods.

What I only knew afterward was that what this system really begins to resemble is a wirelessly connected version of an electric typewriter. Without the additional iAWriter app, there is still the native Notes app, and also Pages, a built-in, full-featured word processing app. So there are writing solutions still available to me on the iPod, for when I don't want to carry the larger iPad. Type it up, connect to my wireless printer and get a laser-printed hardcopy.

I had decided, once I acquired the mechanical keyboard, to make the older iPad a dedicated writing tool, since I'm no longer using it for video editing, and it still has plenty of memory capacity for text files. Whereas the newer iPod Touch I'd use primarily as a video editing and still photo tool. After yesterday's experience, I'm going to have to stick with this plan going forward. The temptation is always to try and shoehorn as many additional apps as possible into these devices, to turn them into general-purpose tools, when in fact their limited memory capacity means, especially for memory-intensive applications like video, they have to remain dedicated to that single purpose.

Android Angst

Now, I do have a Dell Android tablet device, which up to now I haven't found entirely useful except as a web surfing platform. But it does have a decent screen size, and an expandable memory capacity via a micro-SD card slot, which I had yet to test. I spent a large portion of today working to get the Dell tablet into a usable video editing platform; and work it was indeed.

First I had to find a video editing app. Unlike iOS devices, Androids don't come with a default video editor. There are gazillions of them available for Android on their App Store, so it's hard to decide which one to choose, but I found one that had a decent review and a trial version for free, with a reasonable price for upgrading, if I so chose, to the full-featured version. Once it was installed and I familiarized myself with its basic features I shot some test footage on my Panasonic GH3, with the intention of testing the file transfer protocol, editing, finalizing and transfer process to an external micro-SD card.

With the raw footage shot on the GH3 I had to figure out how to transfer the footage to the tablet. The camera has a micro-USB-to-USB cable, while the Dell tablet takes a standard Android connector, whose cable also terminated to standard USB. So I figured all I had to do was find a female-to-female USB adapter and I'd be in business. Wrong.

After running around town and finally finding such an adapter, it turns out that the camera doesn't see the tablet at all, when the two are wired together. Great.

Then I remembered that the GH3 has WiFi connectivity, which I'd never used. After fiddling with it, the tablet would see the WiFi signal from the camera but couldn't transfer the files. So I went to the Android store and found, after two tries, a Panasonic app that talks to the GH3. With that installed on the tablet I was able to transfer the video files wirelessly. Which sounds sophisticated but isn't; I'd rather have it work via cables, because wireless means the transfer is slower, and it eats batteries faster in both camera and tablet.

So finally I got the files transferred to the internal memory of the Dell tablet, and off I went making the test movie using the new video editor. With the free version, I discovered I couldn't finalize in 1080P mode, and it also wouldn't see my micro-SD card. So I figured that, since I liked the editor well enough, it was worth purchasing, and perhaps the upgraded version would solve all those problems.

But the App Store wouldn't take my PayPal, no matter what I tried. I ended up having to figure out another way to complete the transaction, but finally I had the full-featured editor installed. And while it unlocked the full resolution feature, it still wouldn't see my micro-SD card.

The strange thing about this is that in the Dell's settings it sees the SD card and how much memory it has available, but none of the apps can access that card. After several more hours of fiddling around and reading discussion forums online about this problem with these Dell tablets, it turns out there was one type of file manager app for Android that might work, which I installed, and low and behold I could finally use it to transfer video clips and finished movies from the tablet's internal memory to the external card.

I tested this feature by first re-rendering the test project at full resulution, then transferred the finished test movie to the card, after which I deleted the original off the tablet's internal memory, along with the entire project from the video editor. So I had the raw camera footage on the internal memory, and the finished production on the external card. Then I started a new video project, and when I went to surf the library of video files to import to the timeline, there was the SD card and the finished test production. Success!

During these tests I also had the tablet connected via USB to my desktop PC, and I could see via Windows Explorer how the files were being moved between the tablet's internal memory and SD card, as an additional means of confirmation.

I started this project early in the afternoon, and got to this point of success by 9 PM. Only six hours of my life gone, but now - in theory, anyway - it looks like I now have an 8" Android video editing tablet that works with my Panasonic camera and can move files between its internal memory and an external micro-SD card. Which implies, in theory at least, that I shouldn't have memory capacity issues going forward. So tomorrow I intend on testing this out with a for-real video project, to be uploaded to YouTube (that feature has yet to be tested, however). We'll see how that goes.

All of this work to get these "simple" mobile devices to function for specific purposes like writing and video editing could have been avoided with the application of enough money to purchase some nice video editing-friendly laptop computer, like a Mac Book. But that's not how I roll. I'd prefer to keep my system as simple as possible, to get as much as I can out of the tools at hand, to find a way to do things in a bit more of a personally satisfying manner.

All of this system engineering has confirmed my suspicions, that in general the Apple iOS platform really is superior, in the sense of being well though-out and stable in performance but also, due to design philosophy on the part of the late Mr. Jobs, purposefully hobbled for doing more intensive, computer-like functions like freely moving files around and being able to expand its memory. Whereas Android is more like a Microsoft product in the sense that, while it gives you more freedom, it comes at the cost of being glitchy, unstable and not well thought-out as an integrated platform; you have to cobble together various applications to get it to do what you want.

I suspect this article is way too long, and boring, for most of my regular readership, since it doesn't involve, directly at least, typewriters or film photography. But it does serve to illustrate that these complex and imperfect systems can be configured to one's liking, if you are willing to expend the necessary effort to find creative ways to work around the intrinsic limitations.

The Losers Blend Mythos

Post-Script: Here's the entirety of the short story series thus far, in the internal chronology of the story's world. The last part yet to be posted online is below, which comes second-to-last in the chronology.

1) "Pigeons" / Oct. 19, 2011

2) "Interface" / Nov. 1, 2011

3) "Barney The Cigarette Guy" / Nov. 14, 2011

4) "Healthy Respect" / Nov. 30, 2011

5) "Winter Crows" / Dec. 12, 2011

6) "The Guy Who Came in from the Cold" / Dec. 28, 2011

7) "Decrepit Underpinnings" / Jan. 22, 2012

8) "Two Lovers" / June 17, 2012

9) "Coming Home" / May 20, 2013

10) "The Real Deal" / May 29, 2013

11) "Some Future" / Aug. 23, 2016
(See below)

12) "Typing Like Your Life Depends on It" / Oct. 1, 2015


You might notice that a number of these stories were written in a short period of time, spanning October 2011 to January 2012, in what I consider to have been a most creative period of my life. It's difficult to manufacture creativity, but I must have been doing something consistently good; perhaps merely hanging out at Winning Coffee had some effect.



The eleventh story in the chronology, "Some Future", is posted for the first time below. I composed it on the Smith-Corona Silent Super, a typewriter that is of the same ilk as the denizens of Losers Blend, for it too was rescued from a former existence of bohemia and the dregs of society, requiring plenty of work, and even now remains noticeably less-than-perfect, but therefore possesses a quaintness because of that troubled background. This is a reformed beatnik typer, yet still possesses the spirit of that Kerouac technology, despite all the work I've put into reforming it into some model of middle-class Americana. It possesses a free spirit, always reminding me of its scars and troubles, as is fitting for a beat typer. One should always respect one's beat typer, for they are the artist-typers of our culture, the ones we should grab first when we wish to channel our inner Muse and capture onto ink and paper a bit of the whimsy of the aether.


"Some Future"
by Joe Van Cleave

Bill threaded the scooter between traffic and rows of parked cars, finding the ramped curb where Harold the store clerk rolled his dollies of produce from the double-parked delivery trucks, early in the morning. Finding his favorite spot on the sidewalk between the newspaper box and light pole, Bill lifted the seat and extracted cable lock and shoulder bag, securing the rig as he'd always done, then headed halfway down the block to Losers Blend, indicated by the mess of tables and chairs on the wide, brick sidewalk, filled with mostly an assortment of college students, street people and hipsters posing as the former. The smell of hand rolled cigarettes and vaporizers filled the autumn air, unseasonably warm.

The aroma of fresh ground coffee, garlic and cayenne pepper from the kitchen greeted him as always, a comforting familiarity in his otherwise hectic existence. "Morning, Todd."

"Morning, Bill. The usual?"

"Yea. And the Times. I'm feeling rich today." Bill didn't always read the news, but sometimes he made exceptions.

Coffee and paper in hand, he made his way to the corner table, ordinarily cluttered with a mess of magazines and sections of yesterday's paper, a catch-all that the old crew knew was actually Bill's reserved table in disguise. He quickly gathered up the detritus of old news and stacked them, in one graceful heave, into the spare chair, then sat down, neatly arranging his coffee, shoulder bag and paper.

Just in time, Maggie, the new gal, brought him his breakfast. "Here you are. Can I get you anything else?"

"Just keep the coffee coming, thanks."

"Well, we normally don't do refills, it's serve yourself."

"I know. But then again, nobody's come here as long as I have, and it's become a kind of tradition, one that Marty started, years ago."

"Oh, you're the special customer. I see. Sure, no problem."

"Special customer? No, not really. I just like tradition, that's all. Otherwise nothing special at all about me."

As Maggie turned to leave, Bill realized his special status as the closest friend to the late founder of Losers Blend was a soon passing phase, one that would be lost to the changes that time brings. Just as cultures evolve, the old Losers Blend would soon be forgotten.

He didn't exercise his special status out of some ego-driven motivation, but as a way of remembrance, or so he liked to tell himself. Remembrance for the way things used to be, for the special person Marty had been, and for their special relationship, forged by a bond that only comes from drastic circumstances. Though he didn't want to think about those dark times, he also didn't ever want to forget. That was the whole point of the messy table in the corner, the one Marty used to sit at during his breaks from the kitchen, back when Losers Blend was just starting and the idea of a bohemian coffee shop was an oddity to middle class sensibilities.

Digging into his breakfast, the chile was as hot as ever, the one thing, aside from the good coffee, that hadn't changed with Marty's passing. Pausing with elbow on table and forkful at mouth, Bill could still recall, as if it were just yesterday, when they'd first met.

Bill's had been a hard childhood, with his mother dying when he could barely walk and then his dad's years of struggle with drink. He'd been passed around from one family member to another, first his grandparents, then an aunt, then another aunt, until he was sixteen and decided enough was enough and he ran away, to start his adult life a few years earlier than his peers, whom he didn't know, having moved from city to city and school to school, always the loner, the outsider, the new guy.

At eighteen he tried to join the Army but failed the entrance exam. People told him you had to be pretty dumb to fail the Army exam, as dumb as a box of rocks. For a while he started to believe it himself, until one day when he found himself on a bus stop bench voraciously reading a discarded paperback novel and suddenly looked up and the world around him looked different from what it had been a half hour earlier, as if those words printed in that grimy, dog-eared novel had been a key that unlocked something deep inside him, like shedding a thin veneer that'd covered his eyes and obscured the truth. Ever since then, he'd been on a journey of discovery, bouncing around from one situation to the next but always with his mind set forward, to some future that only he could see, a future anyone else who knew him at that time would be hard pressed to imagine could ever circumvent the situation he'd been in then.

And then he met Marty, a fellow vagabond like himself, and at once they both knew they'd found brothers in each other, the family they didn't have. Marty and Bill hung out together, ran the streets together and did whatever they could to get by, sometimes doing things they knew were trouble, but justifying it with the reason that they were desperate, and desperate people had to do what they had to do. Survival was the motto on the streets.

But Marty and Bill weren't dumb. They knew enough of the streets and the people on them to know that once you fell to the allure of the bottle or the needle or the pipe, you were a goner; that the way forward and up would be much harder. And they both shared a common vision for the future, one in which they both could keep a bit of their present freedom while somehow making it in life, threading that narrow needle's thin gap between slavery to The Man and succumbing to the flesh.

Bill suddenly realized he'd been staring out the window, the food that had once been on his fork now staining the front of his shirt, and Maggie had refilled his coffee while he'd been away in his private reverie. And this was how he came to understand that he'd crossed over some crucial milestone in life, when instead of all his energy being consumed in striving for a seemingly unattainable future, he spent more and more time recalling a past that was even more unattainable. The future was certain to happen, though maybe not the future one hoped for; but the past was gone forever, its only evidence distant memories and some artifacts, like bones unearthed and preserved in our private museums, memories of the kind one finds prodded into surfacing from the dark pond of life by snapshot photos in crusty old albums.

The morning rush now over, Todd was busying himself with cleaning up and preparing for the noon rush when he noticed Bill standing at the counter. "Need a refill?"

"No, Todd, thanks anyway. I'll be going now. And the table in the corner, you should clean off those old newspapers, I'm sure somebody'd like to use it."

"Later, Bill."

But Bill didn't answer, or didn't hear him. He exited out the grimy glass door into the morning light, bag on shoulder, without looking back, his face set on some future only he could see.